Europe appears to be growing up at last

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Europe is no longer a choice — it’s a necessity. So declared Nicolas Sarkozy,
finally sketching out his vision for Europe in front of a loyal audience of
supporters in Toulon yesterday.

The French president went back to basics in setting out the rationale for
European integration. The European Union, he argued, doesn’t mean less
sovereignty — it means more sovereignty because, in a globalised world, the
individual nation state is increasingly impotent.

President Sarkozy is due to meet Angela Merkel in Paris on Monday and the pair
are pledging proposals to “guarantee Europe’s future”. The shape of a deal
to paper

It is understandable that the construction of an air-polluting,
noise-blighting £22 billion third runway to turn Heathrow into the world’s
pre-eminent superhub caught the eye, but the Davies report into airport
expansion also made another radical suggestion: that — third runway or not —
Heathrow should start acting like the UK hub that it pretends to be